So I was attempting to do some data mining for Occupancy Austin an advocacy group focused on keeping Austin affordable by preventing lowered occupancy limits. I’ve created a github project that has the code for downloading and processing construction permits from the City of Austin’s website.

I ended up pulling residential demolitions. The results are probably not that suprising to anyone (hint: if you think someone has bulldozed a lot you’re probably right!). Here’s a fun browse-able map.

Here are my thoughts.

• West Campus (tract 16.03) is pretty obvious. There is a lot of removal of single-family housing to make way for students. While some may dislike this, it’s really hard to argue that we shouldn’t be stuffing as many students as we possibly can in that area. This should not be an area for single-family housing. It looks like 16.03 is west of Lamar and may be part of whatever trend Allendale is part of.
• Zilker (13.04) I find especially interesting. The northern edge and Barton Hills do not have the high number of demolitions. But the middle that has much of the very small housing (sub-1000 sq/ft) does. This would seem to correlate with three of the areas with a high concentration of demolitions – North Loop (3.05), Bouldin (13.05), and East Caesar Chavez (14). Desirable areas with homes that are half the current median home size.
• East Riverside neighborhoods like Santa Monica Park, Sunridge, Audobon Place, and Colorado Hills are untouched. These are mostly homes that are greater than 1,500 square feet and are surrounded by duplexes, four-plexes, and apartment complexes.
• Bouldin (13.05) has the second highest number of demolitions, despite no longer having much of a student population. I would predict that if the “stealth dorm” ordinance passes and is successful we should expect an uptick in demolitions in the North Loop area as wealthier Austinites find the area more desirable due to the lack of students.

Do you see any interesting conclusions in the data? I can generate maps back further. Is there a particular year you’d like to compare to?

I attended the Butler Trail (otherwise known as the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail) planning meeting. This was for public input and nothing is even remotely set in stone yet. Here are my notes:

• New (much larger) restrooms and a water fountain are currently being built where the boardwalk ends where the old restroom hut was. These are happening.
• A lot of support for having as much peaceful, natural area as possible.
• There was not support for having concessions or amplified concerts.
• Trail and bridge in front of the hostel building is coming soon. Trail Foundation already has funds.
• As part of new Holly Shores park there was discussion of a pedestrian bridge connecting Holly Park on the North with the peninsula. There was a small, but very vocal contingent from the Holly neighborhood opposed to this.
• Propose expanding the pedestrian tunnel under Pleasant Valley 4 to 5 times its current size and adding lighting.
• A native orchard was proposed at the corner of Pleasant Valley and Lakeshore. A green classroom, natural children’s play area (think more the hill in Butler park/a labyrinth; not a playscape) was also proposed for that area.
• There is a proposal for a new dam. The current path over the dam was pretty much everyone’s top priority (as well as at the Holly Park planning meeting), but unfortunately is not in the scope of this project. It has to be part of the new dam. If anyone has more info on that planning process or kickstarting it I think there would be massive community interest in getting the ball rolling on that.
• February 25th there will be boards at city hall. They’re going to try to get them there by lunch time, so you can drop by during the day, view the proposals, and put post it notes on them with your opinions.

Those are my bullet points. A weird point happened that seemed especially pertinent relative to the current Mabel Davis/Winnebago Lane dog park situation. The top two comment getters were the bridges. The third was around dog parks. When asked to summarize the helper said that the comments were for no dog park. Thankfully a woman stepped up and pointed out that there were quite a few post-its in favor of a dog park. The facilitator was somewhat dismissive (in my opinion) and said they’d count them.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it makes me realize that people who want things are going to start having to be assertive. We think following directions and putting down that we’re in favor of them will be enough. That someone will tally the votes and the majority will have their say. But it really highlighted to me tonight that the people who’d come up to the facilitator and talked her ear off about how much they didn’t want a dog park had clearly made a much bigger impression than the 10+ politely written post-it notes in favor of one.

A little sad that arts people weren’t out to support replacing the Dougherty Arts Center functions moving to the hostel.

If we want to have nice things we have to use the tactics of the bullies who continually seem to get their way.

• We need multiple people there. Even just two. The Holly Street group only had about 4, but they made an impact.
• We need to have an organized message before hand. And potentially regroup and craft a custom message there.
• We need to raise our voices. Facilitators allow people who sound passionate or angry to talk (there was a long diatribe about rowing programs getting kids into college). They tend to cut off or redirect people who are talking politely.
• We need to not be afraid to speak.

Otherwise we’re going to keep questioning why we get amenities that you can’t walk to, that are poorly planned, and that don’t accommodate the things we want to do there. If you’d like dog parks in the area and would like to work on that cause please do drop me a line.

Article is here. My comments:

Could you please print which neighborhood groups opposed the park? I’m technically the president of the Burleson Parker Neighborhood Association and we did not take a stance on the park. We border Mabel Davis on the entire eastern side. It’s incredibly frustrating to keep hearing there was “overwhelming opposition”, but there are no numbers and I personally saw what looked like 25 people in opposition to the parks at meetings (with similar numbers in favor). 25 people should not be able to stop a park approved in bonds by tens of thousands of Austinites.

The proposed Winnebago Lane park is a horrible project. It’s in an industrial zone bordered by a lumber yard, train tracks, and downwind from a automotive paint shop that can make breathing hard when the wind is right. I jog around the area, but haven’t jogged down there again due to the lack of sidewalks and connectivity.

I think it will be successful, not because it’s a good project, but because we have so much demand for dog parks in Austin. Kensington Park may border the park, but council member Riley confirmed with the parks department that they’ll need to drive nearly 2 miles to actually get into the only entrance to the park. This park will increase congestion during rush hour.

As a city we need to rise up and stop the tiny minority who keep stopping the projects we want. Call or send an email to council and tell them to put the park in Mabel Davis. Lets actually make the walk-able Austin with nice parks that we all desire a reality.

So Chris Bradford wrote an interesting article on the missing middle in Austin’s housing market. I live in a neighborhood with all of these types of housing just around the corner (as well as large apartment complexes). And they’re a huge source of two of the things Austinites say they desire most – affordable housing and students for urban public schools.

But our current code doesn’t support building these sort of buildings, and we have ordinances like McMansion that makes it harder to build them. McMansion was extended to my area so many of the homes could not be replaced with what is currently on the property or what is across the street.

I think that’s somewhat intentional. Look at the following points:

• I hear again and again that we need to make urban areas more attractive for families so they don’t move out to the suburbs.
• The majority of kids in urban schools come from multi-family housing.
• Areas with underpopulated urban schools frequently fight new apartment complexes, duplexes, and fourplexes.

When I look at this I can’t help but think that these neighborhoods are fighting to try to bring suburban kids back. You know, the kind of kids who make a school into a “good school”. I think a lot of our zoning has to do with this perception that allowing lower-income residents a foothold in our neighborhoods will make the changes permanenent.

But the changes are permanent. Affluent white parents are never going to have the approximately 4 kids that each single-family home needs to have in these areas to make up for all the singles. Aging suburbs will never again reach the concentration of kids they had when they were brand new. That’s the nature of suburbs (and almost all of Austin’s urban neighborhoods began their lives as suburbs).

Perhaps we need a new slogan. How about:

“Multi-Family is Family Housing”

You got something better?

The Austin Bulldog has an article on fundraising for Prop 3 and 4. Perhaps most interesting is parsing what corporations think will happen versus what the campaigns are saying. Prop 4 is primarily funded by lawyers, the builders of Circle C (and longstanding foe of Save our Springs), and Austin Cab Company.

Prop 3 is primarily funded by home builders and out-of-state commercial/residential property owners (home away style??). As well as libertarian groups.

Still somewhat puzzled by what the libertarian groups hope to get out of this? There is no geographic region of libertarians in this town whose voices are being blotted out by all those voters in central Austin.

I’m assuming the cab company wants to ensure that it continues to be easy to lobby for their monopoly of permits. 10-1 seems like it could easily lead to 10 geographic cab companies.

Obviously the biggest group are home-builders who see both plans as a boon to making it easier to build in Austin. Especially West Austin over the aquifer. Far-west Austin does not have a strong history of voting in elections, and this could make it easier to outvote the environmental voting block (which after this will more than likely be concentrated in one or two districts).

I think I’m going to vote no on Prop 3 and 4. They both seem like a bad idea. Do you have any thoughts on what you think the source of this money means?

If you haven’t been following the news two apartment complexes in my neighborhood have been literally falling down. They are the Las Palmas and Wood Ridge apartment complexes. I haven’t met anyone who lives in the area who was surprised by this. Most just thought it would have happened to some of the complexes that appear to be in worse condition (Canyon Oaks I’m looking at you).

Thankfully no one has been hurt yet, but these complexes allow for an illustration in how housing prices work in Austin. A lot of people in Austin seem to think building new expensive condos raise housing prices. But these complexes show that isn’t the case.

The estimated monthly rent for Las Palmas is between $600-700/month. Wood Ridge is $680-860/month. Think about that. These are places that are literally falling down, and yet they can still charge 40% of the cost of one of those luxury rentals on Rainey Street. Even though the buildings are falling apart.

That says to me that Las Palmas and Wood Ridge cost the same as the luxury rentals. Once they rebuild the building they will be able to charge a 60% premium for a building that isn’t falling down. Not because they’re luxury condos. Because they’re not falling down.

They’re already priced as structurally unsound luxury condos.

So the Austin Chronicle came out with their voting endorsements and they’re good. I’d suggest printing them out and taking them with you to the voting booth.

But I wanted to take a minute and point out two issues that are particularly important to the performing arts.

Theater is a Special Interest Group

Special Interest Groups have a bad rap right now. It’s very easy to get voters riled up against them. But let’s face it, we are they. We advocate for and receive money from the city. There’s a tax that exists specifically to fund grants we receive (the Hotel Tax).

Single Member Districts

I bring this up because Single Member Districts were proposed specifically to suppress the influence of Special Interest Groups and have closer alignment between geographic areas and a single city council member. The city will be carved up into districts each represented by a single council member. Since all theater practitioners don’t live in the same geographic area we potentially would have a harder time garnering support for theater related legislation.

Four Choices

So there are really 4 choices on the ballot with regards to single member districts:

1. Vote no to single member districts (No on Prop 3 and Prop 4)
2. Vote yes for only geographic representation (Yes on Prop 3)
3. Vote yes for a hybrid of geographic and at-large representation (Yes on Prop 4)
4. Vote yes for any form of geographic representation (Yes on Prop 3 and Prop 4)

I can see why people would chose to go with voting no to both. As theater artists we stand to lose our collective power under a geographic representation system, but geographic representation has the potential to provide more engagement between city council and some of the less represented parts of town. So I’m a bit torn on this issue.

I cannot advocate for voting yes on Prop 3. Prop 3 carves Austin up into 10 districts, each of which votes for 1 council member. There is only one council member we’d all vote for – the Mayor. While this is being sold as a populist solution it would make mobilizing theater advocacy very difficult and we’d potentially have to have 10 advocacy groups in each geographic region (or more likely we’d need 5 and then work to get the mayor on our side).

I think ultimately if you’re going to vote for geographic representation, I’d recommend Prop 4. Prop 4 is a hybrid system with 8-2-1. That is 8 geographic representatives, 2 at-large representatives, and the mayor. We’d all vote for the 2 at-large council members and the mayor, plus our geographic representative. That would mean that it would be fairly easy to get a coalition of at least the 2 at-large council members, the mayor and we’d only need to get 3 geographic regions on board.

Voting Yes on Prop 3 and Prop 4 will mean your vote will count towards both, and whichever gets the most votes will be implemented.

I’d love to hear your comments and reasoning. This issue is complex and I can’t say my mind is solidly made up.

Prop 18

Prop 18 potentially includes money to replace the Daugherty Arts Center. So this one is very important for all theater artists to get out and vote for. In pretty much every survey they do The Creative Alliance gets lack of rehearsal space as one of the biggest challenges for theater companies in town. Very rarely do we get the chance to vote on something that so directly addresses our pain point as artists.

So get out and vote!